


tousled and undone

by abovetheruins



Category: Buzzfeed Unsolved (Web Series)
Genre: Fluff, Humor, M/M, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-02
Updated: 2019-04-02
Packaged: 2020-01-01 04:30:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,328
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18328655
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/abovetheruins/pseuds/abovetheruins
Summary: Shane’s a good person. He does his taxes, he doesn’t litter, he uses his goddamn blinkers. He’s a decent human being.So he’d really like to know why the universe keeps fucking him over.





	tousled and undone

**Author's Note:**

> Based on this prompt from a lovely anon: "Maybe you could write something specifically about Ryan's fluffy hair? Maybe Shane really loves it? Maybe its because he loves it so much that Ryan wears it like that most of the time now? Just Shane loving his hair and wanting to pet it all the time?"
> 
> It got a little too lengthy to fit in with my other prompt fills so... here we are.
> 
> [Some](https://theawfuledges.tumblr.com/post/182001930188/yaboybergara-ryan-bergara-on-his-instastories-on) [inspiration](https://theawfuledges.tumblr.com/post/182026887805/yaboybergara-ryan-bergara-during-the-chilling) for those of you who haven't had their lives ruined by [Ryan's](https://theawfuledges.tumblr.com/post/181920755998/yaboybergara-ryan-bergara-on-his-instastory-on) [hair](https://a-slow-disaster.tumblr.com/post/182033790858/this-is-an-appreciation-ask-for-ryans-messy-hair) yet.

Shane’s a good person. He does his taxes, he doesn’t litter, he uses his goddamn blinkers. He’s a decent human being.

So he’d really like to know why the universe keeps fucking him over.

Plopping him next to Ryan on their first day as interns, leaving his schedule free and clear so he had no prior commitments when Ryan was searching for a co-host, making them  _click_  in a way that the audience ate up like candy, in a way that Shane had never felt with any of his other buddies.

And now…  _this_.

_This_  being his co-host, his partner in crime, his ghoulfriend, who had apparently rolled out of bed one morning and decided that hey, this is a look that could devastate everyone within a five-block radius. Let’s run with it!

It’s fine. It’s all fine. So Ryan’s letting his luscious locks fly free and product-less these days. So what? It’s no big deal.

“You’re really married to this look, huh?” Soft laughter drifts from Shane’s side, nearly dwarfing the rustle of fingers shifting through hair. Nearly.

“What’s wrong with it?” Ryan asks, his voice lifted in mirth.

“Not a thing,” Curly says, and then adds, “Right, Shane?” with a teasing lilt to his voice that Shane is amazed Ryan doesn’t pick up on. Shane has to brace himself and plaster what he hopes is a passably normal expression onto his face before he turns his head.

Because yep, there’s Ryan, sitting at his desk in all his messy-haired glory, sleepy-eyed and soft around the edges because it’s barely past nine a.m.

And there’s Curly, bright-eyed and smiling and ruffling his fingers through Ryan’s hair, stirring it into an even fluffier mess and looking at Shane like – well, like he’s having the time of his goddamn life.

It’s fine.

It’s  _fine_.

“Mm hm,” Shane hums, his lips twitching. Into a smile, probably, because he’s totally happy with his life and the universe and every decision that has led him to this moment, his stomach churning with nothing but good feelings as he watches Curly playfully tousle Ryan’s hair.

“You really think so?” Ryan asks, all earnest and shit, like he actually has doubts about this, like days’ worth of their coworkers complimenting him and ruffling his hair and shooting smug looks in Shane’s direction hasn’t already clued him in to the fact that he looks fucking fantastic, lovely in a soft, effortless way that Shane doubts anyone else in the office could pull off half as well. Asshole.

It’s a change, is what Shane’s getting at. He’s still… adjusting.

“Yeah, man,” he says, careful to keep his voice both neutral and platonic. “It suits you.”

Ryan grins, slow and bright and so obviously pleased that Shane feels a little like a voyeur watching the way his lips curl and his cheeks dimple with the force of his joy.

He barely even registers Curly’s laughter or his footsteps fading as he walks away.

But it’s fine. It’s all fine.

*

It’s not fine, is the thing. It’s not fine that Ryan looks all soft and weirdly cute with his hair falling messily over his brow and curling around his ears, and it’s not fine that Shane keeps  _noticing_. It’s not fine that he keeps forgetting himself and raising a hand to do something stupid like ruffle Ryan’s hair or push the messy strands off of his forehead, and it’s not fine that all of his coworkers keep catching him at it.

It’s just – look, he’s not the most tactile guy out there but Shane still falls prey to the compulsion to touch soft things: to sink his fingers into his bedsheets after a long trip or during a lazy morning; to stroke his palm over the fluffy underbelly of a cat; to reach out to feel the silk-smooth texture of expensive fabric, even as it puts his fingers in dangerous proximity to bronze skin because Ryan just  _had_  to try the stupid shirt on and didn’t seem to care that the fabric was practically see-through it was so sheer –

The point is, Ryan’s hair can now be added to the list of Soft Things that Shane Madej would Really like to Touch (but Probably Shouldn’t), and it’s slowly but surely ruining Shane’s life.

… Maybe he’s being a little dramatic, but he’s a mildly popular YouTube sensation – he’s allowed.

What he’s  _not_  allowed is the bittersweet burst of - yes, he’ll admit it - jealously every time one of his well-meaning but meddling coworkers takes it upon themselves to ruffle, tousle, or otherwise muss up Ryan’s hair. Seriously, the amount of envy Shane feels every time someone else shifts their fingers through those curls is ludicrous, and the fact that Ryan hasn’t noticed is either a shining example of how oblivious he can be or another piece of evidence to support Shane’s theory that the universe in all its infinite wisdom is Out to Get Him.

Either way, something has to give.

*

“You’re being an idiot.” Ryan says it like it’s an endearment. At this point in their friendship, it probably is.

“Sweet talker,” Shane replies, even though he has no idea what he’s done this time to warrant the name calling. They’ve been working away diligently at their desks for the past couple of hours, staying late to take care of a few last odds and ends before they leave for an Unsolved trip, and up until this point they’ve been pretty quiet, both lost in their own little worlds. “What’d I do now?”

“It’s not what you’re doing, it’s what you’re  _not_  doing.”

Shane opens his mouth to respond, realizes he needs more than a moment to process  _that_ , and closes it again.

Ryan huffs a laugh at his reaction, more fond than annoyed, and grabs for Shane’s hand. Shane’s brain has half a second to send out a red alert to the rest of his body before Ryan’s pressing his palm to the crown of his head and saying, “Go on, big guy. Knock yourself out.”

Shane’s brain kind of… fucks off for a second, at that point. He knows he should be saying words - words like  _what_  and  _why_  and  _how dare you make me feel these feelings in our place of work_  but instead he’s just… sitting there, mouth slack and fingers loose in Ryan’s hair.

_Do something_ , he orders himself, his eyes zeroing in on the sight of dark curls twined around his fingers. Something wrenches in his chest, and wrenches  _hard_.  _Laugh it off, make a quip, take your goddamn fingers out of his hair_.

_Yes_  cries his brain, which has struggled to instill in him a sense of Logic and Decorum and to remind him that there are certain rules he needs to follow within the parameters of his friendship with Ryan, certain rules that he’s ignoring pretty fucking blatantly by touching Ryan this way.

_He started it!_  cries his heart, that doofus, practically bouncing against his ribcage as his fingers begin to shift through Ryan’s hair, careful not to pull at the messy strands but having no qualms about sinking into the soft curls.

Ryan makes a sound, a soft, curious noise, but before Shane can freeze or do the smart thing and yank his hand back, Ryan goes right back to tapping away at his keyboard, seemingly nonplussed at the fact that his coworker is just sitting there. Stroking his hair.

_Hashtag just bro things_ , Shane thinks, a touch hysterically. Then again, Ryan’s spent the last few days having his hair ruffled and mussed and played with by a gaggle of their coworkers – maybe he’s just desensitized to it at this point.

Or so he thinks, until they’re watching late night television in their hotel room a few nights later, fresh off a red-eye flight but still too wired to sleep just yet, and Ryan clears his throat and says, “So. The hair thing.”

Shane nearly chokes on his beer, having pushed the memory of his fingers sinking into Ryan’s hair far, far into the back of his mind as soon as he’d left the office the other day, for the sake of their friendship and also his sanity.

“The hair thing?” he coughs out, abandoning his bottle on the side table and pretending to be enthralled by the black and white horror flick they’d only been half-watching.

Ryan huffs, less a sound of annoyance than one of exasperation, with maybe a little bit of fondness thrown in for zest. “You don’t have to contain yourself, you know,” he says, all casual and cool like this topic really isn’t a big deal while Shane sits there silently panicking because Ryan  _knows_ , he’d figured Shane out and why the fuck had Shane ever given in to his stupid whims and stroked Ryan’s hair anyway, what kind of an idiot was he, thinking that could be a one-time thing and then it’d be out of his system when that couldn’t be further from the truth, especially when Ryan kept running his own fingers through his hair in increasingly distracting ways and –    

Okay, he’s spiraling. He’s also a little affronted by the role reversal that’s going on here, honestly.

“Don’t know what you mean, bud,” he says, inwardly cringing at such a weak deflection. The thing is, it’s not even his dumbass desire to play with Ryan’s hair that’s twisting him up inside. It’s the fact that he wants so much  _more_ , that he’s wanted more for a while, and that he’s scared to death to do anything about it, that makes his breath rattle and his spine stiffen and his heart go into overdrive.

And either some of that must be audible in his voice or show on his face, because Ryan makes the same sound he’d made while Shane had been shifting cautious fingers through his hair – a soft, curious noise that tells Shane nothing about what he’s feeling or thinking, before Ryan just – tips over.

Literally tips right over, curling his knees up toward his chest and pillowing his head on Shane’s thigh.

Shane freezes, and stares, and ventures, “Uh, Ryan?” in a voice he barely recognizes, nigh on speechless in a way he usually hates but too paralyzed by surprise and a healthy dollop of confusion to do anything about it.

“I liked it,” Ryan says, voice barely audible over the low drone of the television. His eyes are focused on the screen but his cheeks are flushed a dull red, and Shane doubts the poorly costumed monster wreaking havoc on a small town has anything to do with it. “The hair thing, I mean.”

“I… see,” Shane says, though he doesn’t. “You liked the hair thing,” he repeats, slowly, as if that will help him to understand any better.

Ryan sighs out a breath and clarifies, “ _My_  hair, you know – “  He waves his hand. “Playing with it, running your fingers through it, that shit. I liked it.”

Shane clears his throat, his fingers twitching at the reminder of doing exactly that. “I mean, everyone was doing it – “

“Not everyone,” Ryan interrupts, shooting Shane an unreadable look, eyes gleaming in the muted blue light of the television screen. “I’m talking about you. You, specifically. I liked it when  _you_  did it.”

Shane stares. “Oh,” he says weakly, and now his cheeks are as red as Ryan’s. That's... that's a good thing, isn't it? It’s more than good, actually; it’s pretty goddamn fantastic, but Shane can only handle so many emotions at a time and he’d rather stick to confusion and cautious hope than let the elation he can feel building in his chest run amok, at least until he knows for sure what he’s dealing with here.

“Yeah,  _oh_ ,” Ryan repeats, a hint of laughter in his voice. He shifts on the bed, getting comfortable, and reaches blindly for Shane’s hand, which Shane gives up without a fight. “Now can you stop looking at my hair like a 12-year-old with a crush and actually do something about it?” he asks, pressing Shane’s hand to the crown of his head and letting go.

“I… have no idea what you’re referring to,” Shane hedges, his heart doing a little jig as he pushes his fingers through Ryan’s hair. It’s soft and a little damp from his shower, and it fluffs up in ridiculous curls as Shane runs his fingers through it.

Ryan sighs, a long, blissful sound that goes to Shane’s head quicker than any beer ever could. “You weren’t subtle about it, big guy,” he says, his eyes slipping closed and his head tilting back. He shivers as Shane’s nails rake gently against his scalp, and Shane’s so distracted by that reaction that he almost misses the rest of Ryan’s words. “Thought you were gonna suplex Curly the next time he ruffled my hair.”

Shane snorts, even as he feels an embarrassed flush climb up his throat. “Don’t think I couldn’t,” he says, and then, “Sorry. About being weird.”

“You’re always weird,” Ryan returns automatically. “And don’t apologize. Just be upfront about your fetishes from here on out.”

“My – It’s not a fetish!”

Ryan glances up at him. “I’m trying to tell you that I’m into you, too, dumbass. You’re ruining it.”

Shane’s fingers freeze, at least until Ryan nudges them with his head to get them moving again. “I… Oh. That’s. That’s good.”

Ryan laughs, a low wheeze that never fails to make Shane light up from the inside out, especially when he’s the cause of it. “Yeah?” he asks, pushing himself up so they’re face to face, palms pressed to either side of Shane’s thighs. His eyes are dark and warm, his hair mussed to hell from Shane’s fingers running through it, and Shane’s so goddamn entranced by the sight of him that he barely remembers to answer.

“Yeah,” he breathes, as if he’d ever say anything else, and Ryan’s answering smile lights up the whole goddamn room.

**Author's Note:**

> Hmu if you want a second part in Ryan’s POV ‘cause uh… I’m already tempted to write one.


End file.
